Home-made Live Rock!

so i'm trying my hand at making my own live rock, because i'm a cheap college student and don't want to pay 500 bucks (possibly more) on some rocks. heres a few pics of my progress with the project, and what i did to get this far.

heres a sample pic of what i have right now, and a few other pics, tell me what you think!




that last one is just how i'm curing the rock, its in a 10 gallon tank with a single power head just for water flow.

few suggestions to begin with... wear gloves, my fingers are covered in blisters from mixing the cement and aragonite by hand. also, plan ahead to keep the mess down. i'm really impatient and made a total mess of my bathroom (wish i had a garage but like a said, i'm a cheap college student), and its gonna be a while before its clean again.

so heres how i did it:

portland cement type I/II
red and brown cement coloring
lots of aragonite, and some regular sand.
all of these except the aragonite can be found at lowes and home depot, just ask for em. aragonite can be found at most any fish store.

mix the cement with water and use about 1 part cement to about 3-5 parts aragonite. mold as desired (make sure you don't smooth it out, it looks much more natural when its lumpy!) to get holes and crevises, i just pushed globs of sand into the still soft cement and washed it away later.

to dry it i used regular sand, which is what you see still stuck to the brownish rocks, the really red one was mostly left out of the sand. i wish i had used more aragonite to lay the soon-to-rocks on instead but i went cheap. i still think it looks pretty good.

i filled a few large bins half way with sand, placed the soon-to-be rock in the sand and burried it. the red lookin one i did not burry, so if you want it to look more like that, don't burry it. i let em all sit in the sand for about 24 hours.

i'm in the process of curing them right now in that 10 gallon tank. basically i'm just gonna leave em in there, change the water every day and wait till the pH is stable at about 8.

tell me what you think, offer suggestions, and gimme some tips on how to cure the rocks faster cuz i can't wait to put them in my tank!

UPDATE! So i've heard alot of mixed feeling about curing the rock with vinegar. after letting the rock cure in water for about a week and a half i tried it out. bought about 6 gallons of it, put it in a that 10 gallon tank with the rock and filled it the rest of the way with water and let it sit for about 4 days. Then let a single peice sit it fresh water for a day and tested the pH afterwards. if it was 8 or above i put it back and let it sit another day. when the rock didn't chance the pH of the faucet water i put it in the tank.

Looks pretty realistic. What I saw some people doing is putting small holes in it to mimic the look of regular porus ocean rock. But yours look really good

I made rock like this too, but I left out the colouring. It's still curing (after 8 months) but it looks really good (that is, assuming the ice didn't crumble it; hopefully it truly is "ice-proof" as they say it is).

-Lynden

To cure it faster you have 2 viable options. First is the easiest, put the rocks in your toilet cistern (the top part that fills up with water). That part is clean and will flush the rocks every time you flush the toilet . Your other option is to put it in like a milk crate and sink it in a nearby stream. Only do this option if the stream is clean from pollutants.

SkiFletch said:

To cure it faster you have 2 viable options. First is the easiest, put the rocks in your toilet cistern (the top part that fills up with water). That part is clean and will flush the rocks every time you flush the toilet . Your other option is to put it in like a milk crate and sink it in a nearby stream. Only do this option if the stream is clean from pollutants.

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i made way more than what would fit in my toilet, but that is a good idea. i guess the more freshwater that runs over it the fast it cures.

i've heard vinager works, any comments?

IMO, vinegar is a waste of time. Its an acid and sure it'll bind to the carbonate and lime to take them out of the water column quickly and allow more diffusion of carbonate/lime from the rock. However the volume of vinegar required to effectively speed up the curing process faster than a stream/cistern method would make it very cost-prohibitive. Remember, toilets and streams are free but tens or hundreds of gallons of vinegar is expensive

update! this first pic is when i first put the home made rock into my tank......


this is how it looks now!


i put some blue lights in there at night when i'm up late, hopin to get a glimps of my snowflake eel, he only comes out at night!


and heres my latest addition to the tank, this gorgeous Russell's Lionfish named Rufio (sorry the pic is so small)


tell me what u think!

Wow, nice job on the homemade LR, tank looks great

Why not take out that odd shaped piece all the way on the right. I'm not sure what it is but its distracting . I love the rocks once again im jealous of how crafty people can be on this forum

Mr.September15 said:

Why not take out that odd shaped piece all the way on the right. I'm not sure what it is but its distracting . I love the rocks once again im jealous of how crafty people can be on this forum

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i dunno...i kinda like the odd shaped piece! adds some variation

Looks nice. I make my own LR from time to time., though I just mix 1 part cement to 5 parts crushed oyster shell.

I cure for 6-8 weeks in containers of water in my loft which I empty and refill about once a week.

Some suggest using salt to aid curing, though this actually makes the structure weaker. Adding sand to my above recipe makes it stronger but also reduces how porous the rock is, reducing the ability of the rock to harbour anoxic

OK. i'm not into marine tanks AT ALL, but this live rock stuff intreagues me.

What, exactly is this stuff

Up till now, I thought it was like imported coral (naughty) with 'things' already seeded or growing on it. It has always amazed me where all the things that grow on the rocks in marine tanks actually come from. I mean, is there a way of 'seeding' a rock so that it grows a coral? Or is it all pinched from the sea?

This is why I am confused by this DIY live rock thread. Surely this guys DIY LR is not 'live' per se? It's coloured sculptured rock, right? Where does the 'Live' bit come from?

Apologies,

Andy

Live Rock is usually dead coral that has been broken off from the reef during storms and surges and resides in the rubble zone/lagoon behind a reef. Although the coral that formed the structure (LR is essentially the skeleton of corals) is dead, other creatures still thrive on it.

The main usefulness of Live Rock is two fold:

1) It contains a number of microroganisms to deal with waste

2) It is porous enough (but not too porous) to allow anoxic areas (deprived of oxygen) for bacteria which complete the nitrogen cycle by processing nitrate into nitrogen gas.

DIY LR is about creating rocks with similar properties to allow the relevant bacteria to colonise the rocks. For this reason it is referred to as DIY LR as it is used in place of conventional LR.

DIY LR is not truly "live" as it does not contain life, but if put in a tank with "real" LR for a year or so it will soon become encrusted with coraline algae and harbour the necessary life that makes LR such a good filter. Obviously you won't get free corals and things on it (bad) but also, you won't get aiptasia or mantis shrimp either (very good).

This is why I am confused by this DIY live rock thread. Surely this guys DIY LR is not 'live' per se? It's coloured sculptured rock, right? Where does the 'Live' bit come from?


to answer your question, no it is not "live". its basically cement and sand when you put it in the tank and is just considered 'base rock". live rock helps tremendously with the cycleing of the tank, and its considered "live" because it has certain algea growing on it (the purple, red and lime green stuff, and probably some other stuff but i don't know everything). so once you put some live rock in with your base rock, the algea and everything growing on the live rock will start growing on the base rock, and then the home made "live rock" actually becomes live rock. its simply just a way of saving money to be honest, and gives you some creative freedom.

so right now its still base rock, but in a few months it will be live rock.